Unearthing Gender : Folksongs of North India / Smita Tewari Jassal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jassal, Smita Tewari, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--Social aspects.

Music.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 296 pages) : illustrations

Other Title:

Unearthing Gender

Place of Publication:

Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Smita Tewari Jassal is Associate Professor Anthropology, Graduate School of Social Sciences at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She is the author of Daughters of the Earth: Women and Land in Uttar Pradesh and is coauthor of The Partition Motif In Contemporary Conflicts: Germany, India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine.

Summary:

Unearthing Gender is a compelling ethnographic analysis of folksongs sung primarily by lower-caste women in north India, in the fields, at weddings, during travels, and in other settings. Smita Tewari Jassal uses these songs to explore how ideas of caste, gender, sexuality, labor, and power may be strengthened, questioned, and fine-tuned through music. At the heart of the book is a library of songs, in their original Bhojpuri and in English translation, framed by Jassal's insights into the complexities of gender and power. The significance of these folksongs, Jassal argues, lies in their suggesting and hinting at themes, rather than directly addressing them: women sing what they often cannot talk about. Women's lives, their feelings, their relationships, and their social and familial bonds are persuasively presented in song. For the ethnographer, the songs offer an entry into the everyday cultures of marginalized groups of women who have rarely been the focus of systematic analytical inquiry.--Amazon.com.

Contents:

The daily grindSinging bargainsBiyah / Biraha : emotions in a rite of passageSita's trialsWhen war is marriageTaking liberties.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4780-9154-1